Nahal Heletz settlement reduces Palestinian land area and poses ‘imminent threat’ to world heritage site
Israel has approved a new illegal settlement on a UNESCO World Heritage site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
Bezalel Smotrich, the country’s far-right finance minister, said Wednesday that his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion,” a bloc of illegal settlements south of Jerusalem.
“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will be able to stop the development of settlements,” Smotrich, who also heads civil affairs at the Defense Ministry, told X. “We will continue to fight the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground.”
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967 and inhabited by some 700,000 Israeli settlers – including occupied East Jerusalem – are considered illegal under international law, whether or not they have Israeli building permits.
According to Tel Aviv Tribune’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, Smotrich is “flexing his muscles, telling the world that he cares very, very little about international law.”
The project, Odeh said, “devours what remains of (Palestinian) land in the Bethlehem area, which has shrunk to almost 10 percent of its original size.” It is located “not only in a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but also in … the only place left available for agriculture, picnics, urban planning and construction.”
Muhannad Ayyash, an analyst at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told Tel Aviv Tribune that Israel’s “ultimate goal” was “to extend Israeli Jewish sovereignty over the entire territory, from the river to the sea”.
“The strategic utility for Israel is always the same, whether it is on this site or on another. It is always about fragmenting the Palestinian population and, above all, creating what it calls facts on the ground (…) in order to prevent the creation of the Palestinian state,” he said.
Heritage site
The new 60-hectare (148-acre) settlement, which received preliminary approval along with four others in June, is located between Gush Etzion and Bethlehem.
Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now has announced it will set up camp next to homes in the Palestinian village of Battir, a World Heritage site known for its stepped agricultural terraces, vineyards and olive groves.
The group denounced the plan, calling it a “full-scale attack” on an area “renowned for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity.”
Israel’s actions constitute “an imminent threat to an area considered to have the highest cultural value for humanity,” the organization said in a statement.
Last year, Israel advanced plans to build 12,349 housing units in the occupied West Bank, the most in 30 years, according to a European Union report.